Man gets $200,000 for wrongful detention in 2018 Carnival plot

A man from San Juan has been award­ed over $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for be­ing wrong­ful­ly ar­rest­ed, false­ly im­pris­oned and as­sault­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers in their probe in­to an al­leged plot to dis­rupt Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in 2018.

High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Tariq Mo­hammed (no re­la­tion) as he up­held his case against the State on Tues­day.

The out­come of the case came a lit­tle over a year af­ter Tariq’s younger broth­er Wasim was award­ed $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion over his treat­ment by the of­fi­cers dur­ing a raid on the fam­i­ly’s home at Mo­hammed Ville, El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2018.

The of­fi­cers searched an apart­ment shared by Mo­hammed’s younger broth­er and his wife be­fore search­ing the area of the prop­er­ty shared by Mo­hammed, his wife and his par­ents.

The of­fi­cers left af­ter they did not find any il­le­gal items in­clud­ing ex­plo­sives.

How­ev­er, they re­turned hours lat­er to ar­rest Mo­hammed based on the in­struc­tions of an As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), who was pur­port­ed­ly re­ly­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from a for­eign in­tel­li­gence agency.

Tariq was de­tained at the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion for sev­en days be­fore he was re­leased with­out be­ing charged on Ash Wednes­day.

Both sib­lings filed cas­es through their lawyers Alvin Ram­roop, Kings­ley Wales­by, and Sar­fraz Al­saran.

In de­ter­min­ing the most re­cent case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that Tariq was un­law­ful­ly ar­rest­ed and false­ly im­pris­oned by the of­fi­cers dur­ing their first vis­it to his home al­though he was not then forced to leave with them (the of­fi­cers).

His find­ing was based on Tariq be­ing re­strained with tie-straps dur­ing the search.

“The na­ture of that re­straint rather than its du­ra­tion, is de­ci­sive,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

Deal­ing with the sec­ond vis­it, af­ter which Tariq was tak­en in­to cus­tody, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that the of­fi­cers did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to ar­rest him af­ter the ini­tial search did not yield any il­le­gal items.

He al­so re­ject­ed the State’s re­liance on the pur­port­ed in­tel­li­gence re­ports as he not­ed that such was not dis­closed and the ACP, who al­leged­ly re­ceived it, did not tes­ti­fy in the case.

“I note a crit­i­cal ab­sence of ob­jec­tive facts con­nect­ing the Claimant to any ar­restable of­fence at the time he was tak­en in­to cus­tody,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

“I am not sat­is­fied that the De­fen­dant has dis­charged its bur­den of prov­ing that a rea­son­able sus­pi­cion ex­ist­ed,” he added.

In rul­ing that Tariq had been false­ly im­pris­oned while be­ing kept at the sta­tion for a week, Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed the of­fi­cers’ claim that they need­ed time to analyse elec­tron­ic de­vices and in­ter­view oth­er de­tainees.

“A blan­ket as­ser­tion of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions can­not serve as a sub­sti­tute for the strict le­gal re­quire­ment to jus­ti­fy a de­ten­tion. The po­lice were ob­lig­at­ed to ei­ther charge the Claimant or re­lease him once the ini­tial in­ter­view had con­clud­ed and no ev­i­dence was found,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

He al­so found that Tariq had been as­sault­ed by be­ing re­strained along with his fa­ther Shamoon dur­ing the search.

“I ac­cept that these sud­den, force­ful, in­va­sive and in­tru­sive ac­tions left the Claimant vul­ner­a­ble and con­sti­tut­ed an im­mi­nent and hos­tile threat to the Claimant,” he said.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered $145,000 in dam­ages, which was par­tial­ly based on his ar­rest tak­ing place in front of many fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“The pres­ence of a larg­er au­di­ence of fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly young chil­dren, com­pound­ed the hu­mil­i­a­tion, em­bar­rass­ment, and in­dig­ni­ty suf­fered,” he said.

He was al­so award­ed $40,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages, in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion, and his le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, yes­ter­day, Tariq’s fa­ther, a pop­u­lar ra­dio an­nounc­er, said that his fam­i­ly was re­lieved that the cas­es pur­sued by his sons were up­held.

He stat­ed that he and his fam­i­ly were shocked that Tariq was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as they have al­ways been law abid­ing cit­i­zens.

“We taught our chil­dren to show re­spect for the rule of law, val­ue your coun­try, your com­mu­ni­ty and its peo­ples and al­ways stay on the right side of the law,” Shamoon said.

“We have al­ways stuck to the side of re­spect for the rule of law, you know, de­vel­op­ing har­mo­nious racial re­la­tions and things like that,” he added.

He said that his fam­i­ly felt com­pelled to take le­gal ac­tion based on their trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

“We were not go­ing to sit down and al­low that to go away,” he said.

He ex­pressed hope that his fam­i­ly’s ex­pe­ri­ence may in­spire oth­ers to stand up for their rights.

“We are hop­ing that this will be an ex­am­ple for the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple must not take, you know, evil ac­tions even if it comes from mem­bers of the armed forces,” he said.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by San­jeev Lal­la, and Brent James.